Walking with Eve in the loved city : poems / by Roy Bentley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bentley, Roy, 1954- author.

Series:

Miller Williams poetry prize.

Miller Williams poetry series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--21st century.

American poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Fayetteville : The University of Arkansas Press, 2018.

Summary:

Finalist, 2018 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Walking with Eve in the Loved City is an ambitious collection. Using a variety of male figures-Jeff Goldblum, Ringo Starr, the poet's uncle Billy, to name a few-these poems skillfully interrogate masculinity and its cultural artifacts, searching for a way to reconcile reverence for the father figure with a crisis of faith about the world as run by men. And yet, despite the gravity of the subjects these poems engage, this is a hopeful, frequently funny book that encourages the reader to look deeply at the world, and then to laugh if she can. Roy Bentley often accomplishes this work through a careful balancing of honesty and misdirection, as when in the poem "Can't Help Falling in Love" the real drama of the narrative-the appearance of an affair between the speaker's father and a drive-in restaurant carhop-operates as a backdrop for the eight-year-old speaker's puerile attraction to the woman; or when the vampire Nosferatu (a frequent figure in the poems) materializes in a trailer park, his immortality becoming a lens through which to process the speaker's righteous anger about wealth and poverty. God too features prominently-as does doubt. Drawing from the vernacular of his childhood, Bentley accesses the simultaneous austerity and lyrical opulence of the King James Bible to invent stories in which the last note struck is often a call to pay kinder attention. More than anything, these poems serve as humanistic advocates, using the power of narrative-film, interview, imagination, memoir-to highlight how people matter. Walking with Eve in the Loved City invites the reader to join in this watching and witnessing, to take part in renewing how we see.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Series Editor's Preface

Acknowledgments

Part 1

Robert Plant Holding a Dove that Flew into His Hands, circa 1973

Our Local Heavens

How Not to Spell Gymnasium

1975

Walking with Eve in the Loved City

Jeff Goldblum in The Fly

Fitzgerald and Zelda, February 1921

Saturday Afternoon at the Midland Theatre in Newark, Ohio

Whatever Else, This Memory Resembles a Dance

The Silence of the Belt When It Is Not Striking the Child

Can't Help Falling in Love

The Force of Right Words

Twenty-Five Astonishing Things to Do with a Pocket Handkerchief

Ringo Starr Answers Questions on Larry King Live about the Death of George Harrison

The Dark Knight, On His Day Off

Hellhound

Transcendence

Part 2

Nosferatu in Florida

Unicyclist with UM Umbrella

The Sound of a Midnight Train in Florida

Watching the Night Approach of Tropical Storm Rita

The Last Man on Earth Takes a Walk in Jupiter, Florida

Bees

Dixie Highway

Suspended Florida State Quarterback Identifies Himself as God

Leaving the Cobb Jupiter 18 Cinema Singing "Springtime for Hitler"

Night Migration

You Must Drive This Car

At the Wheel of the Pilar, Ernest Hemingway Addresses the Breezes off the Coast of Cuba

Live Nudes

The Lives of My Poems after I'm Gone

God's Circus at Its Wintering Grounds in Florida

Jim Morrison &amp

The Doors in Miami, 1969

Part 3

Lee in the Orchard, 1865

"And the Blood Came Trickling Down"

Black Radio

Jack Johnson Returns to His America to Eat Cold Eels and Think Distant Thoughts

Truck Picture, 1962

Byron and Shelley, Maintaining

Beautiful Ohio

White Cane Lying in the Gutter in the Lane

A Palestinian Boy Looks through the Rubble inside His Home in a Refugee Camp near Tyre

The Nascent Soul Selects a Set of Appalachian Parents.

Einstein and Chaplin at the Movies

WD8RBB

American Christian

The Pop-up Book of Falling in Love

James Dean Kissing Julie Harris in East of Eden

America as Ex

Herons, in April in Ohio

Death at the Lakeshore

Part 4

Puberty

Astonished Man

God Shows Up in Iowa

When Billie Holiday Sings about Southern Trees

The Fury of a Patient Man

With the Lights of Houses Flashing By in the Darkness

Dressing after Sex

The Days of Miracle and Wonder

Nosferatu Exits the Garden State Parkway to Gas Up at the Wawa in Barnegat

O, Kindergarten

Mexican Clowns Deny Costumed Killer of Drug Trafficking Boss Belonged to Their Profession

The Mountain Elvises Get Ready for Talent Night

G

And the World All Leaves and Morning Air

The Color Yellow, Love, the Fall of Leaves in Autumn

One Wench in the House between Them

Far

My Father's Love Letters

Rimbaud Dying.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

"2018 finalist, Miller Williams poetry prize"

ISBN:

9781610756334

1610756339

OCLC:

1010494539